Now that we have a good understanding of the internal genitalia of a female we're going to
discuss the external external genitalia and before I get started we're going to talk about
specific structures but all the structures in this area are going to be covered with skin there are
differences between the areas dependent on whether the skin has associated hair or sudoriferous
glands sebaceous glands but all of this area is going to have a high amount of sensory innervation
and that's particularly important in terms of sexual arousal and allowing for those erectile
tissues associated with the clitoris to become engorged and to and to become erect so let's
start with the mons pubis and mons means mountain so mons equals mountain and you can see right here
this is going to be one of the more anteriorly placed components of the external genitalia and
underneath is a high amount or a large amount of adipose tissue or fat and in this area
you're going to have a high amount of sebaceous glands so you remember sebaceous glands mean oil
glands as well as sudoriferous glands or sweat glands in these specific types of sudoriferous
glands are going to be those apocrine that are associated with the smell associated with it which
is different than the eccrine glands that you have in the majority of your body now if you continue
kind of posteroinferiorly you're going to have two folds of skin referred to as the labia
majora and this is really just a continuation of the mons pubis as you move inferoposteriorly
like the mons pubis this is going to have skin associated with it as well as variable amounts of
adipose tissue deep to the skin in this area now as we move medially you're going to have smaller
folds of skin these are referred to as the labia minora and as it's name would suggest these are
going to be smaller than the labia majora and you can see right here this is going to be on
either side and kind of those lateral boundaries of the vulva or the vest of the vestibule so the
labia minora what's different here as opposed to the labia majora is this is going to be hairless
skin and also you're not going to have a lot of those sweat glands you're not going to have a
lot of those sudoriferous glands but you do have high frequency of sebaceous glands or those oily
glands and that can serve as kind of a lubricant in this area now one thing I want to note before
I move on in terms of this so the labia minora here you can see it continuing anteriorly into
this larger structure and this is referred to as the clitoris the clitoris one thing that
you don't have in this particular picture here is what we refer to as the prepuce and that is
just the skin that's going to cover the majority of the clitoris which is referred to as the body
and the clitoris now the body of the clitoris is made up of almost exclusively erectile tissues
and specifically that erectile tissue we're going to refer to as the corpus cavernosa and what will
happen is during sexual excitement or sexual arousal the blood vessels will dilate allowing
for blood to enter into this region allowing for it to engorge and to become erect in this region
so you can see the majority of the body right here and just as reference your labia minora is kind of
this further extension up into the clitoris which is going to be anterior now right over here this
region right here is referred to as the glans clitoris is just a dilation of the most distal
portion of the body of the clitoris so right here this is all referred to as erectile tissue
and we're going to talk about the erectile tissues that are going to be on either side as well and we
referred to those as the crura or the crus of the clitoris depending on whether you're talking about
both sides which would be the crura if you're only talking about either the right or the left side
that would be referred to as the crus now one thing before we move on the clitoris is purely
an erectile tissue there is nothing associated with your urine excretion in this region which
is what you would have in terms of the penis of the male okay so now we're going to move on to
the vestibule and the vestibule is just this area right here that is an opening and it allows for
two main orifices or the exit of both urine as well as menstrual flow so we're going to start
with the more anterior of the two and that's the external urethral orifice so just to get an idea
of where we're at this is going to be posterior to the clitoris which is right here and then anterior
to the vaginal orifice and it's considerably smaller than the vaginal orifice which takes
up the majority of the vestibule on either side of the external urethral orifice you're going to
have what we refer to as para-urethral glands sometimes you'll hear these referred to
as Skene's glands and like we have in all of our courses this is an eponym meaning this area was
named after the individual that described it and most an Anatomy currently we really try to move
away from using these eponyms so on either side of this external urethral orifice you'll have
these para-urethral glands that will secrete small amounts of mucus in this region and actually these
para-urethral glands are going to be a homolog to the male prostate okay so now we're going to move
posteriorly to the vaginal orifice and like I said previously the vaginal orifice is going to be
considerably larger than the urethral orifice it's going to be bordered by the hymen and when the
hymen has been broken you'll have what's referred to as the hymen or hymenal caruncle which is
just a remnant of that hymen on either side of the vaginal orifice you're gonna have what's referred
to as greater vestibular glands which will secrete kind of a lubricant in that area which will help
in terms of any type of entrance of anything into the vaginal orifice typically those secretions
will occur during sexual excitement or sexual arousal now we're looking at an illustration
here and there's two things going on here in this particular image we're only looking at
the erectile tissues so this is going to be deep whereas and this these two images down here these
are going to be muscles that are going to be covering these erectile tissues so these are
going to be more superficially located than the the top portion of this image now we've already we
have we're gonna discuss the male erectile tissues but these are really going to be homologues of one
another they just have slightly different names depending on whether you're talking about male
or female and so once again let's talk about the clitoris here like I said the majority of
the clitoris is what we refer to as the body of the clitoris and then either side we have
what we refer to as these crura so you can see they're really attaching to this ischiopubic
ramus so the part of the bone right here and these are going to be covered when we're talking about
the associated here this is kind of associated with what we refer to as the corpus spongiosum
homologous spongiosum I'm gonna spell this right and then the crura are going to be associated
with the corpus cavernosa so these are just the specific terminology associated with the erectile
tissues so you have all these spaces and all these sinuses within these erectile tissues that allow
for blood to be able to fill in those sinuses and region now also a note here you're gonna have
the bulb of the vestibule this is going to be on either side of the vestibule so these are erectile
tissues as well and you can see when we're talking about the crura the ischiocavernosus-- is going
to cover that erectile tissue and then in terms of the bulb of the vestibule the bulbospongiosus
which makes sense it has bulb within its name is going to cover the bulb of the vestibule
and so when that bulbospongiosus contracts that's going to put pressure on anything that
is entering into the vaginal orifice now looking quickly again here in a bit more detail with this
bulb of the vestibule this is going to be deep to the labia minora that's the smaller lips or folds
in that region and lateral to the vaginal orifice and this is just going to be similar to what we -
or is going to be homologous to the bulb of the penis which is composed of the corpus spongiosum
erectile tissue now as you would probably think there's going to be a great abundance of arterial
supply in this region and really it can be separated into what's supplying the superior
portion of the vulva and the inferior portion of the vulva so when we're talking about superior
branches these are all going to be branches are almost all going to be branches of the femoral
artery and remember let's think back in terms of understanding from where the femoral artery
branches the femoral artery is a branch of your external iliac artery whereas what's supplying the
inferior portion of the vulva is going to be your internal pudendal artery which is a branch of your
internal iliac artery so even though it's not the the big branches of the femoral or the internal
pudendal it's smaller branches that are going to supply all of these structures in this area now
in terms of what's going to provide innervation of the vulva it's the pudendal nerve predominantly so
the pudendal nerve is going to be coming from your sacral plexus and in terms of what's supplying the
vulva in particular it's going to be this perineal or perineal you'll hear it either
way and particularly when you're talking about the clitoris it's this dorsal nerve of the clitoris
right here that's going to be the prominent or the dominant supply in this region all right so we've
really gotten into the details of the internal genitalia structures of the female now let's talk
about the external genitalia and really when we're discussing this we're talking about structures
involved with the vestibule and these really involve the orifices by which menstrual flow
can exit as well as urine and the clitoris which is going to be the erectile tissue in this region
now I'm not really going to get into the details of the skin that's covering these structures but
what I really want to note is that all the the genitalia in this region are going to have a very
prominent supply in terms of sensory innervation and this is a particular importance in terms of
sexual arousal to allow for the engorgement of the erectile tissues of the clitoris